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Holy Communion is another ritual of our church that cannot be taken for granted. Even if most Evangelicals view the bread and wine as only symbolic of the body and blood of Christ—and there are many Evangelicals who view them as more than that—the role that those symbols play in our lives cannot and should not be minimized. Holy Communion focuses our faith Christ's sacrificial death, which delivered us from our sins and signaled his conquest over the demonic forces of the universe.

My earliest memories of church services involve the sacred specialness of Communion Sundays. Before I understood any of the theological underpinnings of Communion services, I sensed that there was some kind of mysterious blessing in the air on these days. I felt an awe and reverence falling upon the congregation, and I was aware that something special, something with inklings of the supernatural, was happening. I realized early on that there was a sacred meaning to the bread and wine that demanded a hushed solemnity from everyone present.

Sitting with my parents at a Communion service when I was very young, perhaps six or seven years old, I became aware of a young woman in the pew in front of us who was sobbing and shaking. The minister had just finished reading the passage of Scripture written by Paul that says, "Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27). As the Communion plate with its small pieces of bread was passed to the crying woman before me, she waved it away and then lowered her head in despair. It was then that my Sicilian father leaned over her shoulder and, in his broken English, said sternly, "Take it, girl! It was meant for you. Do you hear me?"

She raised her head and nodded—and then she took the bread and ate it. I knew that at that moment some kind of heavy burden was lifted from her heart and mind. Since then, I have always known that a church that could offer Communion to hurting people as a special gift from God.

Some claim that they can worship alone, and I do not question their claims. Indeed, those who cannot be alone with God are not fit for community. But the positive experience of worshipping alone does not contradict my argument that something different happens when Christians come together in corporate worship. The sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that at such a gathering a unique feeling of oneness often emerges—he called it "collective effervescence." He meant that there is some kind of shared emotion and psychic power that can be experienced only in communal worship. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, those who share in this ecstasy keep coming back for more.

I belong to an African American church, and on those special days when the congregation "really gets down, and the Spirit breaks loose," as my pastor says—those are days when that collective effervescence is especially evident people say afterward, "Oh, we had church today, didn't we?" For them, on those days the church becomes something more than a gathering of people in a sanctuary. It becomes a happening. But such happenings would never happen if there weren't "an earthen vessel," as Paul called it, to contain them. That's what the church is. In spite of all of its flaws and shortcomings, it is the "earthen vessel" that can serve as a home for sacred happenings and the special fellowship that the Greek New Testament calls koinonia.

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May (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51